Screen

Introduction

GNU Screen, or "screen", is a window management program available on UMIACS UNIX hosts that splits a terminal into multiple windows that can each be used for a separate process. This can be very useful when a process will be running for a long time since it can be allocated to one of the virtual terminals created by screen, and the others can be used for other shell tasks.

Usage

To invoke screen, simply use the following command:

screen

Alternatively, to start a program with screen:

screen vi program.c

This will invoke screen and, in the newly-created window, start editing the file program.c in vi.

Ctrl-A is the metacharacter for commands in screen; press it before every key command. Some useful commands in screen:

• Ctrl-A + C (Creates a new window.)
• Ctrl-A + [0-9] (Switches to the window corresonding to the number, window 0 is the first window initialized by screen.)